Plain Talk
By
Mursi Saad El-Din
I have been following an interesting, albeit vehement debate initiated by an article in the New York Times on 2 August and which continued in that same paper and in the Herald Tribune.
It is, perhaps, rather more a battle than discussion, and concerns The Passion, a film about Jesus's final 12 hours, produced and directed by Mel Gibson. The film has been denounced as anti-Semitic since it appears to confirm the contention that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ.
The Vatican absolved Jews of that crime in 1965. Gibson, though, apparently rejects the decision of the second Vatican Council.
What has intrigued me is the way in which Gibson came under almost immediate attack as soon as news of the film leaked out. The Anti- Defamation League -- the US-based Zionist organisation -- was first to attack, followed by the Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles. Time magazine then joined the battle, digging up a story about Gibson's father who was, according to Rich, the author of the first article, "a prominent traditionalist Catholic author". Time quoted him as saying that the Vatican Council was a Masonic plot backed by Jews and that the holocaust was a charade.
The campaign against Gibson soon crossed the Atlantic. The Independent of 16 August published a profile of Mel Gibson by Andrew Gumbel. While the article purports to be an innocent account of Gibson's life, giving details of his career, it is adorned with several odd passages. It describes the theology on which the film is based as "a bizarre offshoot of the Catholic Church" which thinks the of the Pope as heretic and that Jews bear the brunt of historical responsibility for the crucifixion.
Gibson apparently appeared on television to defend the film. "[It] will show the passion of Jesus Christ just the way it happened. It is like travelling back in time and watching the events unfold exactly as they occurred." To which, Gumbel asks "how, pray tell, can Gibson be so sure that he is right, especially when the Gospels themselves are contradictory and vague in many details."
The writer then goes on to say that "according to his critics, Gibson has the Jews clamouring for the death of Jesus in ways that neither the Bible nor the historical record suggest."
Gumbel, too, refers to Gibson's father, quoting his anti- papal utterings alongside remarks to the effect that Al- Qa'eda had nothing to do with the 11 September attacks, and that income tax was and remains a communist plot inspired by Karl Marx.
The writer goes on to describe the decline in Gibson's acting ability. After his success in films like Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously his talent, Gumbel argues, was buried beneath a welter of commercial crowd- pleasers. Even Braveheart, his 1995 Oscar-winning portrayal of William Wallace's uprising against the English, which also marked the actor's directorial debut, is denounced. It has since appeared with alarming regularity, Gumbel notes in passing, on lists of the worst Academy Award-winning films ever made.
The International Herald Tribune of 20 September published another article by Frank Rich, in which he rubs salt in the wound. "What makes the saga of The Passion hard to ignore," he writes "is the extent to which its combative marketing taps into larger angers. The Passion fracas is happening in an increasingly divided America fighting a war that many on both sides see as a religious struggle." Rich then goes on to quote an Anti-Defamation League rabbi as saying that Gibson "is playing off the conservative Christians against the liberal Christians and the Jews against the Christian community in general."
Thus has the anti-Gibson campaign been elevated from an argument about a film into a national issue. In his recently published article Rich writes that "The Passion has become a focal point for the culture war which will determine the future of our country and the world."
